Monday, August 13, 2012
The Closing Ceremonies were a little weird
Maybe it was the influence of the Christian Bros. but the whole thing reminded me of a cross between Madonna's Bedtime Story music video and Shock the Monkey. Even Duran Duran wore long pointy hats, whirling dervishes to West End Girls and then there were peformers dancing around with garbage pails on their feet and then giant supermodel posters came by paraded by dark figures and then Annie Lennox without Dave Stewart sang out something on a float and there was some kind of tribute to David Bowie thrown in the middle but again I was over the hump at that point. Ah the Brits, just a sliver of acid, get those dark Gothic creative juices flowing. I only watched the Games sporadically heavy channel-surfer that I am. There was the inspirational Oscar Pistorius story of course with its sci-fi edge, Gaby Douglas the first black American gymnast to get the gold and Phelps who's retiring. Now he can go home and smoke his bong. There was the high-diver Tom Daley from Great Britain who splashed too much during one critical dive and didn't go in at the right angle only to make beautiful comebacks right after that. I was always afraid of them hitting their heads on the board. There was the Mo guy who won the 1000M and 500M races and speaking of which I think I only saw one white runner. I remember many years ago some really fast black runner I forget the name and one interviewer asked him how come he's so fast and he said when he was growing up he was used to running away from the cops. Actually I don't think you can say that today, Bob Costas would be fired. American swimmers Missy Franklin, Ryan Lochte...tried the butterfly as a kid in Tibbetts Pool in the big YO and that there's a stroke that completely goes against the grain and human nature, dunno the purpose. Not into the beach volleyball at all, that's when I channel-surf. Likewise women boxing each other's brains out and don't care to watch cycling indoors around some track, more into the diving/swimming and track & field events as I said. Of course they never had that Munich moment-of-silence marking in 1972 when terrorism and international sports mixed but what did you expect exactly? It's like the Olympics is being run by the UN. Kudos to Jewish-American gymnast Aly Raisman for even bringing up the topic. Next stop in cuatro anos Rio de Janeiro, expect a decadent undervibe. Mark my words someday chicken-spitting will become an Olympic event. Why the hell not? everything else is:)
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Well, Z-man, now ya gotta hang on for another 4 years.
ReplyDeleteOnly ONE comment??? What was I supposed to do, talk about Paul Ryan?
ReplyDeleteMake that 3 comments; there has to be more to life than politics...
ReplyDeleteYou think the blade runner
ReplyDeletewas at a disadvantage, or had a synthetic advantage?
"There has to be more to life than politics..."
ReplyDeleteCommon sense says there is. There's your human machine to consider, ailments like high-blood pressure, losing and maintaining weight. Ya got a goiter growing out of your neck, I'd think politics could wait. Work, a subject unto itself. Do you want a dog or a cat? what to feed it? Food shopping, what are the best values? etc. etc. I mean we all need to live right? You encounter a strange creature in the woods, what to do? that's not political. How to get a good night's rest, what to imbibe before that. The list is endless and most on the list ain't even political. Well the health issues leads to health care ok but lately I've been reading field guides and self-defense books. What good is knowing all the senators and congresspeople if you can't defend yourself to live another day or what to do if a poisonous serpent gets ya? Folks who only concern themselves with politics are at a definite loss imho. It never ceases to amaze me that's all we discuss is Politics, it ain't logical.
The blade runner, most of his fellow athletes who were asked the question felt it was not an advantage and their comments were generally along the lines of would you really rather be like him? One Olympian kept his thoughts to himself, presumably he felt he had some type of carbon fiber advantage. Should he have been allowed to compete? at first the answer after much deliberation was no then that evolved ("I've evolved on the issue"). Reminds me of the blind woman contestant on Gordon Ramsay's Masterchef, some feel she shouldn't be there and many feel she's an inspiration. I've gone both ways on that one and even now don't seem to have a firm position either way. I can understand the view that Pistorius has an advantage though, I mean to even things out they should all get to use a pair ya know?
ReplyDeleteRE:"I've been reading field guides and self-defense books." Any info on cougars? Last year a young male took up residence outside
ReplyDeleteSuperValue grocery (beats running
down whitetail?) They terminated the thing. Now that it is very
hot and dry, another has been hanging out: sashayed through downtown, mauled a 1500 lb horse and yesterday killed and ate some
little girl's colt. They've got
hunters and trackers out, but cougars tend to disappear. Ya think I should move to Yonkers?
Today I was in Oxford at Walmart and here comes this odd looking cop car and it says on the side "OXFORD POLICE VOLUNTEER PATROL" and "POLICE CITIZEN ACTION TEAM". Now I am so sorry but that shit just makes me really, really nervous. It stinks too much like "taxpayer funded local vigilante team". Where's Joe Arpaio?
ReplyDeleteI mean, if they're so short on cash that they need to recruit deputies from amongst the locals surely they could have perhaps waited a couple of years to get all those new Chargers (fully decked out with ram bars and all appropriate rural-cop accessories) and instead funded their staffing.
Today I was in one of my (lovely) Indian gopi dresses. I feel certain that me driving a Taco (fully decked out with ram bars, running boards and an Oakland Raiders decal) was instrumental in me not getting a third look after the second one.
Oxford? They still have that huge Revlon plant there?
ReplyDeleteThey do and it's still running. I was over in that part of town the other day. The Lenox plant across the street from Revlon shut down but Certainteed still has a huge plant and so does Bandag (retread, part of Bridgestone). Macra Lace has an outlet store, I'm not quite exactly sure about where the plant is located. Burlington Mills (ie Coat Factory) shut down quite a while back.
ReplyDeleteOxford is also home to the Biofuels Center, which is at the same place as the USDA Tobacco Research Station. I drove past there today and you could just smell the tobacco. Reminded me of driving through Richmond VA but not as strong.
Of course Oxford is famous for less savory reasons.. the book/film Blood Done Sign My Name is about the race riots in the 70s.
I forgot to mention that Oxford is 25 miles southeast of where we live. It's right on i85 and from my job (also on i85) I can be there in 15 minutes. So now that they built the shiny new Walmart, if I need to do shopping after work it's easier and closer for me to go through Oxford rather than drive to our house and then another 10 miles past to get to Roxboro.
ReplyDeleteBB, you know damn near EVERYTHING, I swear.
ReplyDeleteDon't know much about N Carolina,
ReplyDeleteSaty. Only been there once, back
when I was in the Pentagon, came down the Blueridge Parkway to visit friends in Savannah, stayed over in Asheville. My middle daughter did a NSF grant at UNC
and I'm sure part of my pipe tobacco comes from there. As for
Revlon, knew a couple of their
chemists when I was in the cosmetics business. ..and of
course everyone knows about your
Research Triangle. Sounds like
Oxford is really a booming small
town, though. You guys been hit by that big drought?
Read the field guide section on cougars BB, general enough information you could wiki. What's even more impressive is the section on jaguars which only rarely venture north of the border into the US but their steel jaws put the cougar's to shame and something about they can drag a full-grown cow a damn-near mile. Wolverines, saw a documentary on them on PBS that was very interesting. Another program on the skunk, did you know their pungent liquid is flammable? I'm dealing with a couple urban raccoons of late.
ReplyDeleteNo... we had a drought a couple years ago and it's taken us that long to recover. Falls Lake was like so dry you could walk from end to end on it.
ReplyDeleteLately it rains near bout every day. I'm not complaining. It's doing fabulous things for my Argonauts.
I like skunks. They look like little pieces of walking shag carpet.
No, I never thought about setting fire to skunk vapor. But, Z-man, you put me into Barney Miller mode.
ReplyDeleteIf you would like to make your own skunk spray, take 4 parts crotyl
mercaptan, 4 parts isopentyl mercaptan and 3 parts methylcrotyl
disulfide (recommend outside, with
gas mask). The mercaptan family
is based on the organic chemistry
of R-S-H structure, where R is any of a number of organics which modulate the intense smell of the SH group. (the greater the molecular weight of R, the less offensive) A mercaptan, tertiary butyl mercaptan is added to natural gas and gasoline which are otherwise oderless; only a few parts per million are sufficient.
It gets weirder, Z-man: human sweat contains a mercaptan called
R)/(S)-3-methyl-3-sulfanylhexan-1-ol (MSH), ....and women liberate significantly more than men. I'll leave that to your interpetation.
It gets weider, Z-man; the ubiquitous permanent wave is based on the mercaptan ammonium thioglycolate; replace the ammonium group with a sodium and you have a strong dipliatory.
Where the heck were we....
...no, I diddn't know the stuff
was flammable.
Satyavati devi dasi, with all due respect, your apparent failure to deduce my meaning of the term from the context of what I've written astonishes me.
ReplyDeleteWhat could possibly be clearer?
I've never denied your intelligence, and recognize you have knowledge and expertise in “some”areas most likely in Science or Mathematics -- where I do not, appreciate your capacity and draw inferences and understand how parallels from parables, fables, allegory, folklore, mythology, fairy tales, poetry, and especially in the knowledge of Socialism as it may apply to "real life" seems to be a bit lacking.
Haven't you noticed how Cultural Marxists ask the same questions over and over again, but NEVER LISTEN to the answers anyone provides?
Frankly your repeatedly asking me what someone means, as you have been wont to do, when the meaning is abundantly clear to most from context, is, itself, an example of Critical Theory at work, though you are probably unaware of it, so conditioned must you have you been by background, upbringing and education as to have absorbed this by osmosis, and think it, therefore, perfectly natural.
Wearing down the opposition by pretending not to understand, but repeatedly asking for definitions and explanations already given, and by refusal to accept or recognize any sense or merit in ideas and arguments presented by the opposition is the quintessence of Critical Theory. It has nothing to do with legitimate literary criticism. It is simply a technique used in the attempt to harass, bully, shame, humiliate, discredit, and if possible destroy opposition by a ruthlessly determined application of intellectual brute force.
Most of the time you sound personally outraged, indignant, affronted, irked, annoyed, infuriated, and approach discussion as though you, personally, -- or something or someone you love very much -- had been unfairly attacked.
That may not be true, but that is the way it sounds to me.
Briefly: "Cultural Marxism" is a term used to describe a methodology devised by The Frankfurt School inspired by the bitter, angry, virulently divisive anti-Christian, anti-Middle Class, anti-Capitalist denunciatory writings of the Italian Antonio Gramsci.
Marxist intellectuals in Europe -- most of them disaffected atheist Jews, it must be said, -- realized that the kind of Marxism that led to the brutal Bolshevism that destroyed Czarist Russia was unappealing to Europeans, so they set about devising ways to make it seductive primarily to youth.
By encouraging outright rejection of and active rebellion against cherished customs, traditional forms of authority vested in Church, School, and the Home through increasingly outrageous, belligerent, aggressive, anti-social behaviors and by giving the green light to rampant sexual libertinism, experiments with sexual perversion, "recreational" drug use and a sort of mindless embrace of anything and everything bound to insult, appall, distress and weaken the grip parents, teachers and the clergy had had for centuries, Cultural Marxism has made tremendous inroads in the past one-hundred years, and has been so successful that you, apparently, have no clue that the direction of your existence has been subsumed within its grotesque, sadly illegitimate purview.
That you are apt to define and dismiss this observation as mere "paranoia" on my part is proof of how hideously successful the insidious advance of Cultural Marxism has been. So successful you seem completely unaware of its hulking presence.
HELL, of course, is the place where one is forced to listen to Cultural Marxists carp, cavil, complain, castigate, counsel, and condemn without ceasing.
I think it was C.S. Lewis who said: "The Devil's greatest accomplishment to date has been to convince the world that he doesn't exist."
Not only is skunk vapor flammable, the cure,
ReplyDelete1 quart of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide (fresh bottle),
¼ cup of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), and
1-2 teaspoons of liquid dish soap..will explode if kept in a closed container. It works well
on dogs and cats, but has to be used fresh and rinsed well. We
had skunk family in a culvert by
the street (the skunk kids are quite cute BTW). I called Fish &
Game and they said I could pick up a trap. "then what?" "bring it over the F&G. The other option
was to place naptha mothballs in the culvert. Odd, stinky skunks
hate the smell of mothballs. Whole family lined up and marched off.
Wow... that was a whole lot of rhetoric with big long strings of adjectives and verbs and alliteration and stuff in it. All for me?
ReplyDeleteI don't know what triggered it, I don't recall calling you paranoid and I'm not at all anti-Christian (I am, however, extremely anti-Dominionism and I believe in the ABSOLUTE seperation of Church and State).
In fact I don't quite know what set you off on such a rant to begin with. Certainly not anything in this thread, I think.
Of course, the odds that it was meant for someone else, in some other thread, on some other blog somewhere, and cut and pasted with the addition of my name, is high.
Thanks for thinkin of me though.
MCT pretty well defines Critical
ReplyDeleteTheory. IMO, he/she gives it way too much import and influence. It
is one of those intellectually obscure things like Soap's Austrian School: both produce a
lot of ideas, and once in awhile
good ones. Speaking of atheist
marxist Jews, Israel is having a
hard time with their Orthodox
population: they are immune from
military, they are mostly on welfare and they harrass their fellow Jews. Their population is
increasing, thre is much resentment among working folk there and I would not be surprised at some point, the problem will lead to Netanyahu's
being replaced. ..next 3-4 years
I predict.
Well I am coming in late to the discussion and only glanced through the comments which veered away from the actual posting a lot, but whatever.
ReplyDeleteI did hear that this was the most watched Olympics ever, which didn't even count those watching online, so I am glad to see that we can still recognize that it is a GOOD thing to see people who work hard at something get recognized for their achievements and that they actually get to receive a prize when they do well. Everybody doesn't get a participation trophy -- yeah!!!
re: skunks, we once had a skunk living under our house that sprayed our house in Feb. (apparently that is mating season and why the spraying probably occurred). We had to move out for 5 days. Finally we learned that a concoction of apple vinegar and whole cloves simmered on the stove will take the smell out of the house. Just wanted to share some bit of knowledge that BB didn't!
ReplyDeleteP.S. We also learned that Glade plug-in air freshener does nothing to help with a house that has been skunked.
Vinegar and cloves-sounds like making sweet pickles. I've heard of people using that concoction in a spray bottle to get rid of ants, too. ..speaking of insect repellant, some guy near hear held up a bank using a can of bug spray.
ReplyDeleteAlways sumthin....
ooh pickles.. BB, have you ever had watermelon rind pickles?
ReplyDeleteI used to make them every year. Yumm.
I never want to mess with one of these, the Brown Recluse Spider aka violin spider. Chances are now found in the 48 contiguous states due to people moving alot and the spider's penchant for lying in furniture and folded towels. Leaves a painful crater-like wound that takes months to heal...scorpions, members of the same arachnid family. Most are as harmless as a bee sting except for the Sculptured Scorpion. Held in high regard by some ancients hence the zodiac sign. Centipedes, now here's a creature I positively hate in the summer but didn't know they were poisonous until I started reading field guides now they get squashed on the spot. Mosquitoes, in the Divine Scheme of Things what's the purpose dear God?? Been meaning to do a post...
ReplyDeleteWoo... brown recluse, I saw a guy lose his arm from a necrotic bite. We also have black widows here. Plenty of poisonous snakes too, found a copperhead in the garden last summer, my conclusion was that we should live and let live and so we each went our seperate ways never to meet again.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading about an extinct species of millipede (also presumed poisonous) where they were like several FEET long. Oh dear Jesus that's a nightmare.
Apparently somewhere in the Southwest you got centipedes up to a foot in length. I remember you posting about the copperhead which I never saw one in the wild but at the Greenburgh Nature Center once. Necrosis, that's the word I was looking for. Why did God create mosquitoes, the flea? I don't think a priest could even answer that one. Field guides are endlessly interesting even if perverse at times like the way a fisher can kill a porcupine, doesn't make for easy reading.
ReplyDeleteYou know how people have an experience and it makes them give up drinking? Well, the day I see a foot long centipede I'm gonna START drinking again. Maybe it'll stop the nightmares I know I'll have for the rest of my life.
ReplyDeleteI'm not precisely sure why there are fleas and mosquitoes, but there IS a reason. No kind of life is arbitrary. I guess maybe to provide food for bats and different kinds of birds. This makes me think of a rhyme by Dean Jonathan Swift:
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller fleas that bite em,
and so proceed ad infinitum.
This was quoted in a book called LIFE by Richard Fortey. Next time you're in the library (which would, I guess, be when you're reading this), put down the field guide a second and go find yourself any one of his books (they are all magnificent), enjoy and be edified altogether.
I had to do a little milli/centi research before I let this go. You seem to be in luck; the giant millipede only goes as far north as Ohio although it's all over the southeast US; and the giant centipede is more south central and southwest. Both are the stuff of B horror movies.
You know bats are not blind as legend has it, learned that on PBS the same one that Romney wants to deny federal funding for although I kinda agree with him here. Feral horses, the only truly wild horses anymore are the Tokhi in Mongolia, all others are ones that escaped and turned feral. There's one culture that relies totally on the reindeer from riding them to drinking their milk and if the reindeer disappeared they'd go too. The 4,000 mile long Yangtze River that runs through central China and destroys various towns and villages when its water overruns its banks, third-longest river in the world and some brave souls row against the currents in some of the tributaries to reach a remote village...where did I learn all this? Globetrekker, that there's a great show and I get it on Ch. 25 over here.
ReplyDelete